Wednesday, April 24, 2013

US Airways Raises Fee for Changing Flights, Matching United Move

US Airways has raised the penalty fee for changing most restricted coach tickets from $150 to $200, just as United Airlines did last week. The other major airlines are likely to follow, with the exception of Southwest, which doesn't charge fees to change a ticketed itinerary.

The $50 extra fee applies to newly purchased tickets only.

Fees for changing tickets on so-called nonrefundable coach fares are a major source of extra revenue for airlines. In 2011, U.S. airlines raised an extra $2.4 billion in revenue from such fees, according to the Transportation Department's Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Full-year numbers for 2012 haven't been reported yet, but the revenue seems to be increasing. In the third quarter of 2012 (the last period that the agency has reported data for), the total raised by domestic airlines on such fees was $652 million, compared with $602.9 million in the third quarter of 2011.

Bio

Joe Sharkey's work appears in major national and international publications. For 19 years until 2015 he was a weekly columnist for the New York Times. He is now a weekly travel and entertainment columnist with the global website Travel.Buzz, as well as an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Arizona, He has written five books, four non-fiction and a novel, one of which is in development as a movie. Previously, he was an assistant national editor at the Wall Street Journal and a reporter and columnist with the Philadelphia Inquirer.
On Sept. 29, 2006, he was one of seven people on a business jet who survived a mid-air collision with a 737 over the Amazon. All 154 on the 737 died. His report on the crash appeared on the front page of the New York Times and later in the Sunday Times of London magazine.
He and his wife Nancy (who is a professor of journalism at the University of Arizona) live in Tucson with horses and parrots. He is working on a new novel about an international travel writer who hates to travel.
"JoeSharkey.com" is Copyright (c) 2006-2015 by Joe Sharkey.